From Our Blog

A new report on MENA (Middle East and North African) people in Hollywood shows that MENA characters in prime-time television shows are almost always portrayed in the context of terrorism. The group behind the report, the MENA Arts Advocacy Coalition hopes to educate the general public about the lack of diverse characters and actors from the MENA region.

"Orientalism involves a way of seeing the other (the Arab) that justifies an ongoing system of domination. Edward Said’s landmark analysis of the problem, Orientalism (1978), is now forty years old, and yet the phenomenon it describes feels as entrenched and normalized as it was when he wrote it."

What is Orientalism?

"Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous. Edward W. Said, in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, defined it as the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”

According to Said, Orientalism dates from the period of European Enlightenment and colonization of the Arab World. Orientalism provided a rationalization for European colonialism based on a self-serving history in which “the West” constructed “the East” as extremely different and inferior, and therefore in need of Western intervention or “rescue”.

Examples of early Orientalism can be seen in European paintings and photographs and also in images from the World’s Fair in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The paintings, created by European artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, depict the Arab World as an exotic and mysterious place of sand, harems and belly dancers, reflecting a long history of Orientalist fantasies which have continued to permeate our contemporary popular culture.

France colonized Algeria from 1830 to 1962. From roughly 1900 to 1930, French entrepreneurs produced postcards of Algerian women that were circulated in France. While Algerian women are portrayed in these photographs as if the camera is capturing a real moment in their everyday lives, the women are actually set up in the photographer’s studio. As demonstrated in Malek Alloula’s book, The Colonial Harem, these photographs were circulated as evidence of the exotic, backwards and strange customs of Algerians, when, in fact, they reveal more about the French colonial perspective than about Algerian life in the early 1900s. This is an example of how Arab women have been exoticized and eroticized for the pleasure of the European male voyeur, as these photographs make visible French colonial fantasies of penetrating the harem and gaining access to Arab women’s private spaces.

The World’s Fairs in Chicago (1893) and St. Louis (1904) helped to reinforce Orientalist imagery in the United States. The crossover from European to U.S. Orientalism can be seen in the images from James Buel’s photographic book that catalogued the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. This publication includes photographs of recreated Arab streets, accompanied by captions that capture the Orientalist thinking of the time. For example, the caption that accompanies the image “Egyptian Girl in Street of Cairo” refers to the “peculiar manners of the Egyptians,” and her “unsightly disguise.” In addition to being written about as an object on display, her characteristics are described as belonging to a backwards culture.

Professor Alsultany on Exoticism and the Exaggerated Perception of the Middle East

“Egyptian Girl in Street of Cairo - In all countries where Moselmism [sic] prevails it is common for ladies to wear a veil over the lower half of the face when appearing on the street. The custom is not so rigidly observed as formerly, and in India it has almost entirely disappeared. Among the Persians and Egyptians, however, it is still a general proactive, and will no doubt continue, for in those centuries the immigration of foreigners has failed to influence the customs of the natives. In the street of Cairo at the World's Fair there was exhibited the peculiar manners of the Egyptians, and a veiled lady was of course one of the curious objects displayed, though she did not always appear in that unsightly disguise, thus proving that she was not a slave to this requirement of all Mohammodan [sic] women.” Buel, James W. The Magic City. St. Louis: Historical Publishing Co., 1894.

Orientalist Image

THE BABY ARAB, “COLUMBUS CHICAGO.” – Selim, a Bedouin Arab, and one of the tribe of Hassan, was presented with a son and heir in the encampment on the Midway Plaisance. The picture above does not represent Selim as looking pleased. But that is nothing. These people do not express their pleasure by wreathed smiles. “Columbus Chicago” does not appear to have the wide-awake characteristics of his geographical namesake. He is asleep. Chicago never is. The mother’s name is Bander. She is not very attractive as to features but for all that she possessed sufficient influence over Selim to induce him to forswear his Christian faith and become a Mohammedan for her sweet sake. As Arabs go this is undoubtedly a happy family. Selim has his hookah stem in his mouth and his scimeter in one hand, and though he is scowling fiercely it is no doubt his habitual expression. He would probably look much worse should he attempt to smile. There is constant rivalry between the tribe of Hassan, who are camel riders, and the tribe of Hagi who are horse riders. Perhaps Selim is meditating vengeance upon one of the Hagi. These rivalries occasioned during the summer some noisy conflicts between the children of the desert, mainly among themselves, though at intervals some outsiders got tangled in the melee and the services of the Columbian Guard had to be called in to restore “dove-eyed” peace. Rydell, Robert W. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.